On what shapes us
To be in a state of sonder
Last month, I had a long weekend visit back to the tiny Idaho valley where I grew up. It was just Siobhan, my eight-month-old, and I, for my first visit ever since having kids where I didn't bring my entire family. Since the only child with me had very simple needs of just nursing and being with Mommy, I had significantly more brain space to think about and process being back where I spent all of my early years. And it got me pondering all the different things that shape us as people.
This past spring, my husband, an avid gravel and mountain cyclist, had a vision for a community that focused on the benefits of movement, specifically biking, for mental health. It started with an Instagram account, where he showcases his great photography taken on his rides, along with thoughts about biking and mental health. We also recently opened an online apparel store to go along with it, with cycling-centric designs hand-drawn by our artistically-talented oldest son. The latest fruition of this incredible vision is a private group on Strava for cyclists who have recognized the importance of movement for their mental health too. My husband originally started it just as a place for members to plan rides, etc., but then members randomly started sharing their stories of the hard circumstances that led them to biking and how that turned so many things around for them. Though I'm not a cyclist myself, I'm part of the group, and I've been so blown away by the vulnerability of these stories. So many incredibly hard things happen to so many people, and we never know what past circumstances are playing into their life now.
These thoughts were swirling in my head as I traveled back to my childhood home. While there I was struck by how many aspects of my life growing up were unusual, but as most kids do, I assumed they were pretty normal. The part of Idaho I grew up in (far eastern central) was extremely rural. The nearest town of any size is Salmon, but it’s only around 3,000 people. I remember in college trying to explain the area to people I met, and everyone was always blown away when I mentioned that the nearest Walmart is two hours away.
The severe ruralness could have meant that our world was small as I grew up, and in some ways it was. I’ve shared before a small glimpse into all that our family did with the outdoors, and I know a big part of that was because nature was the only thing for literally miles and miles. This was intentional on my parent’s part, and overall, it was a great childhood. But especially as someone who doesn’t love constantly being outside, I was very thankful that this life in a tiny Idaho valley was broadened by travel.
My dad worked for the Forest Service, and summer was his busy season with building trails and fighting wildland fires. Homeschooling meant that we could adjust our family schedule to his work schedule, and so every year, in the less busy season between January and March, we would take a big family trip. Most often it was to the Southwest because my mom was constantly craving warm weather, but one year we did a big loop of Idaho east to Wisconsin (where most of our extended family lives) down to Texas and then over the Arizona. I think I was around ten, but now, almost thirty years later, I still have so many memories of that trip. National parks and state beaches and tiny towns (my dad avoids big cities at all cost!).
Looking back, I can see how all those yearly trips helped to shape the way I viewed the world. Living in such a remote area, being homeschooled, and not regularly attending church, my view of who people are and how they lived could have been very narrow. Idaho isn’t exactly a cultural melting pot! But seeing so many different lives lived in so many different ways helped me to realize that my way isn’t the only one.
This travel continued after I graduated. Though my first eighteen years were spent in the same fifteen mile square, the next five years took me all over the world. In that time I lived in Montana, India, Wisconsin, Thailand, Florida, Missouri, New Zealand, and California. A few short years after getting married, my husband and I moved with our little family from California to Tennessee, and a couple of years after that, from Tennessee to Colorado. This month marks ten years lived in Colorado, but every single one of those other homes shaped a part of me.
Some influences were big and some were small, but each one made me look outside of myself. Some made me feel awkward, like the time I parked in the wrong area of an expo center hosting a children's consignment sale, and had to walk my long-skirt-clad, Chaco-wearing, baby-wrapping, nose-stud-sporting self past the very long ticket line to a NRA gun show in east Tennessee. Twice. Some offered brief glimpses of intense solidarity like when I lived for five months in an intentional community at the very southern tip of New Zealand. But this highly varied exposure to lives that were nothing like my own was so good for my personality that easily tends to think that my way of living is the only right way.
And then there were…the books. I could write for hours and hours on the different books in my life that shaped me, but suffice to say, there have been many. Though there are many factual books that have challenged and enlightened and encouraged me, I’ve always much preferred fiction. I used to feel guilty about that, like it wasn’t cerebral enough, but then I started seeing articles on different studies done on how reading fiction develops and increases empathy. And it makes sense. As intellectually stimulating as it can be to debate philosophy or argue theology (though is that something God would really want us to do?), in no other medium than reading fiction can we enter into the thoughts and feelings of others. And through that we discover that we actually aren’t the center of everything.
There were obviously many other things that have shaped me over the years, from immense joy to intense pain, but the thoughts that have been percolating in my mind for the last several weeks since my trip back to Idaho had to do with how I view others. As a word girl, an Instagram account that I really enjoy is Aesthetic Logophile, and a word that I learned from her content is “sonder”, a noun meaning “the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one’s own, which they are constantly living despite one’s personal lack of awareness of it”. And I think that concept is one that, if more people possessed it, many of the social problems in the world would disappear.
May we be people whose lives are shaped by looking outside of ourselves, by regularly being in a state of sonder.
“[Jesus said] ‘By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.’” (John 13:35)